Chapman Pincher: Dangerous to Know

Chapman Pincher: Dangerous to Know

In March this year the Daily Express sold an average of 488,246
copies a day. In 1945 it averaged 3.3 million copies – a figure that
went on rising until it peaked in 1961 at 4.3 million. The Daily
Mirror eventually overtook it (selling an average of five million
copies in 1964), but for a time the Express was the biggest-selling
newspaper in the world. There was a crackle and dazzle to it. Fleet
Street had no more experienced and mischievous proprietor than Lord
Beaverbrook, no more technically gifted editor than Arthur
Christiansen, and few more celebrated reporters than the paper’s
defence and science correspondent, Chapman Pincher. Out of the
Express’s triumvirate of black-glass offices in London, Manchester
and Glasgow came a torrent of newsprint that set the popular tone for
the last days of imperial Britain, the ‘second Elizabethan age’ that
was half-thrilled and half-terrified by Britain’s endeavours to build
its own hydrogen bombs and jet airliners, worried about what the
Russians were up to, and comforted by the Giles cartoon, the William
Hickey column and The Adventures of Rupert Bear.